2006 AP Excerpt Distillation

Describing how people tend to torture nature in the passage from an eighteenth-century novel, the narrator utilizes an agitated tone to condemn what these people are doing. The narrator adds words with negative diction and connotation, such as "cruel nastiness" and "stupid curiosity," to characterize the narrator's disgust towards hurting nature like these people do sometimes. Through the use of these strong and hurtful words, the narrator hopes to make readers who do hurt nature think differently about their actions and possibly help preserve the world they were hurting before. This passage helps people see the horrible actions done to nature, and it shows how people need to create a better society where nature is conserved and respected.